"Robert, I must scheme to live."
"I think you must if you are to keep three spare bedrooms for visitors."
"I am left a widow, Robert, with a fair amount of furniture, and a wretched pittance of two hundred a year. How am I to live like a lady and educate the children?"
"But why need you have taken so large a house?"
"What am I to do? How am I to eke out my means? I cannot lose caste. I can't go and open a shop; I can't turn Court milliner; I can't begin and speculate in the funds; I can't present myself to the Government or the Bank of England directors, and make a curtsey, and say, 'Please, gentlemen, double my income for me, and then perhaps I can manage to get along.' Can I?" added Mrs. Chester, fiercely.
"I never said you could."
"No; I have only got my own resources to look to, and my own headpiece to work upon. It has been ransacked pretty well of late, I can tell you. The first idea that suggested itself to me was to educate Fanny at home with Anna Chester's help, and to get half-a-dozen pupils as well, on the plan of a private family. But I hated the thought of it. I have no nerves and no patience; and I knew I should be worried out of my very existence. Besides, education gets more fantastical every day, and I am not up to the modern rubbish they call requirements: so I said, 'That won't do.' Next I thought of getting three or four gentlewomen to live with me, on the plan of a private family. Quite as visitors, you know; and the longer I dwelt on the scheme the better I liked it. I thought it would be a pleasant, social way of getting on; and I determined to carry it out. Now you know why I have taken a large house, and am putting it into good order."
"That is, you are going to take boarders?"
"If you choose to put it in that plain way. You are so very downright, Robert. Lady Ellis is the first coming."
"How did you hear of her?"